


Reality Check

by Dream_Steel_Shadow



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, I come into this fandom just to leave yall a sad oneshot, Magic has rules, Magic only works on the boiling isles, Not A Happy Ending, Or if you're from the isles, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23761756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dream_Steel_Shadow/pseuds/Dream_Steel_Shadow
Summary: Rule #1: Magic cannot come from nothing. It requires an energy source, such as the bile generated by a witch's bile gland.Rule #2: Humans do not have a magical bile gland, and thus must rely on the magic of their surroundings to perform the same feats that a witch can.Rule #3: Magic is a gift from the Boiling Isles.Therefore, the human realm does not have magic.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 73





	Reality Check

**Author's Note:**

> Today I learned I still have fic ideas that aren't just an excuse to write nsfw. So that's good. Hope this makes you sad!

It had been a bittersweet goodbye when Luz had to leave the Boiling Isles. But her summer there had itself been an accident -- if she stayed past the end date of the Reality Check summer camp, her mom would be worried. As much as Luz loved magic and the wonders of the Boiling Isles, she still loved her mom just as much.

"Feel free to visit anytime kid. Just remember the Dimension Door spell and you'll be back in no time at all," Eda had said. That had been the final spell Luz had learned -- she wasn't going to rely on another chance meeting with Owlbert to get her back to the Isles. That first meeting had been a stroke of remarkably good luck. 

Dimension Door would enchant a door to lead to a door in the Owl House. That way, she could come back whenever.

Luz had given Eda and King one last hug, which they seemed slightly less disgusted at. The token disgust was either from Luz generously giving hugs the whole summer, or perhaps... just maybe... they were going to miss her. Luz knew which one it was.

"I'll see you soon," Because why wouldn't she visit anytime she could?

And then she was back in the human world, and the door leading to the Boiling Isles folded up and disappeared as it always did when its job was done.  
\--  
Camilia wasn't home when Luz returned -- she was still at work for a few hours. Good. Luz could take the few hours to adjust to being home.

Once she set her things down, Luz sent her mom a text to let her know she was home. 

"You won't believe the summer I had!" she added in another text.

Luz wasn't sure how much she was going to tell her mom about her amazing summer on the Boiling Isles. Would she even believe her? 

Well, wait. While Luz was no master witch, she knew her fair share of spells. That would be plenty of evidence that her summer had been far more magical than anticipated. Seeing a notepad on the kitchen table, she confidently drew a light glyph. Her first spell, and the one least likely to cause any damage if she did it in the house. 

By now, she didn't even have to think about tapping it. It was a reflexive action.

Which is why she suddenly wasn't so sure she'd tapped it when nothing happened.

Luz tapped the glyph again.

Still nothing.

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.

 _Okay, calm down Luz._ Maybe she had forgotten some part of the light glyph.

Because that was definitely a thing that Luz did, even though her memory was near photographic, and her attention to detail and precision were unmatched when it was something she cared about, like magic. That thing that she had been learning all summer, and had been obsessed with for as long as she could remember. You know, that. 

Still, she pulled out her spellbook from her satchel.

Her spellbook was a notebook filled with glyphs and their effects noted down. To prevent an accident, she had left the circles just slightly open, so that an errant tap wouldn't leave a room riddled with light, ice, fire, and plenty of other things she'd learned on the Isles.

Since it was just a first draft, she had taken notes in order of spells learned. That meant the first page was light. Other than the safety gap in the circle, it was the same glyph that she had just drawn on the notepad.

But, maybe she had made some other mistake! Luz ripped out an empty page from later in her spellbook and laid it over the glyph on the current page. Then she traced the glyph.

Tap.

Her face literally lit up, as the paper crumpled up into the familiar orb of light, and gently floated to the ceiling.

Her heart, which had been racing at a million beats per minute, calmed a bit. Ok. Maybe it _had_ been a mistake and she hadn't noticed.

But everything about the glyphs was the same, again minus the safety gap.

Wait.

Not everything was the same.

Anxiety pooled in her gut as she tore a new piece of paper from the notepad, and laid it on top of her spellbook's open light page. She traced the glyph again.

Tap.

Nothing.

_Oh no._

Realization hit Luz like a ton of bricks. This had been a lesson learned with her ice glyph:

Magic is a gift from the Boiling Isles.

She had been piggybacking off the magical energy of the Isles every time she had done a spell. Which was fine -- the Isles had plenty of magic, and the magic she used was probably recycled back into the Isles. 

But the human realm had no magic, so there was no energy for her glyphs to piggyback off of when she wanted them to activate. Not only that, but the glyphs originated from the Boiling Isles -- even if there was magic in the human realm, it may not understand what she was trying to do with glyphs because it might not be the same magic language. It would be like trying to speak Magic Spanish to a system that only understood Magic Japanese.

Her magic worked when she used paper from her spellbook because that notebook had originated from the Isles -- the trees used in the paper had grown on a magical island, and probably were themselves magical. She had used the pen that was on the table, but there was enough magic in her Isles-origin stationary that the magic flowed into the nonmagical ink that was on the paper. This was also why when she had first learned magic, she could use her own notebook paper: she'd been on the Isles long enough that her nonmagical stationary had "soaked up" the magic of the Isles.

There was so little magic in the human realms that there was no way her things from the Isles could hope to fill the void the the magic that was in and on them. In fact, the magic on them might dissipate and then she would never be able to do magic again.

If this didn't mean that Luz would probably never see her Boiling Isles friends again and probably would be called crazy if she ever told her mom anything about her summer, it would be fascinating and she would be inclined to do more research and experiments on the properties of magical things in the human realm and nonmagical things on the Isles.

But all this meant that Luz probably would never see the Isles and her friends again and she would lose any ability to do magic and then she would be sent to Reality Check Summer Camp _for real_ or she would end up in therapy which would be fine and great if she actually needed it because man, therapy wasn't a bad thing and really should be destigmatized because it helps a lot of people, it would be that she didn't need therapy because the Boiling Isles were real and Eda and King were real and Willow and Gus and Amity and, and, and,

Tears sprung to Luz's eyes. She'd heard it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but she was losing a _whole world_ in this moment right here.

But wait! She blinked, and a couple tears rolled down her face as she realized one way out: maybe if she drew Dimension Door on paper and tapped it when it was on a door, she could make it back. She'd practiced by drawing with pencil on an actual door, but maybe pen on magic paper would get her back to the Isles so she could tell Eda and figure something else out. Maybe she could get her own door to the Boiling Isles so she wouldn't have to rely on magic in a world where magic didn't exist. 

Luz grabbed her spellbook and ran up to her room. Her closet door should work great for trying to get back to the Owl House. 

Kneeling on the floor, she ripped out another blank page from her spellbook, flipped to the page with Dimension Door on it, and traced it. Luz knew all her spells by heart, but she didn't want a misdrawn glyph to be why the spell didn't work.

_Please work please work please work_

Luz slammed the paper against the closet door, and then,

Tap.

The glyph lit up of course, because it was on magical paper -- but something was wrong. Usually, when Luz did magic, the object would either be consumed (like a piece of paper on a light glyph), or the whole object would glow (like a door with Dimension Door cast on it).

Only the glyph was glowing, and Luz realized the light was seeping into the woodwork of her closet door.

Technically, it was working! But a piece of paper was much smaller than a door. There wasn't enough magic in the paper to sufficiently enchant the door. Plus, the ink was not magical, so that was also sapping what little energy the paper could give to the door.

Luz took her hand off the paper, which stuck to the door. Now the light pulsated, with each crest of brightness getting dimmer. After a few moments of this, the light of the glyph flickered out and the paper fell to the floor, spent.

Touching it, she realized that something was different about it now that it had been sapped of magic. She'd gotten used to it on the Isles, or perhaps it was only something noticed on a recently nonmagical object, but something was _missing_ from it, a certain emptiness was there.

She touched the door, and realized it felt a little less empty.

So maybe if she drew enough Dimension Doors and used them on the nonmagical door, it would have enough energy to take her back to the Owl House.

Luz got to work on tearing out all the empty pages of her spellbook, drawing glyphs on them, and applying them to the door.

Each time, the glowing reached more of the woodwork, the door glowing brighter and brighter.

Tap.

The last formerly empty piece of spellbook paper gave its magic to the door.

Hand shaking (both from apprehension and drawing a bunch of glyphs), Luz reached to open the door.

It opened to reveal the inside of her closet.

Unfortunately, magic followed the rules of entropy. The light of the door had already started to diffuse into the wall and thus the rest of the house.

Compared to the piddly amount of magic inherent in her notebook pages, the house was an ocean, it was space, it was infinite. Overall, there would be no difference in the house's magic levels, and eventually it would dissipate into the rest of the world.

Tears burned at her eyes. She couldn't think of another way back without magic, and without finding Owlbert.

The realization that she may never see her friends and never do magic again hit her, and she began to sob.  
\---  
Camilia came home to hear crying coming from her daughter's room.

Oh no, what could've happened between Luz returning from Reality Check and Camilia coming home? Luz almost never cried -- she was so confident and happy that there wasn't much to cry about, at least as far as Camilia knew.

Luz's door was ajar, so Camilia opened it.

Luz looked at her, teary eyed like she'd been crying for awhile. She was on the floor, surrounded by paper with strange symbols on them, and next to her was a book with "Luz the Witch's Book of Spells"

Oh no.

She must have taken so poorly to Reality Check that she'd deluded herself into thinking she could do magic.

"Mom..." Luz started,

"Shhhh, it's okay mija. I'm here now" And Camilia wrapped her daughter in a hug.

Tonight, Luz could cry, and tomorrow Camilia would work on getting her the help she needed. It would be hard to undo the delusions, but she knew Luz would thank her for it later.

**Author's Note:**

> ARE YA SAD anyway I love just making characters think REAL HARD so that's why not dialogue heavy
> 
> comments are always appreciated and mean the world to me


End file.
